I'm having trouble making much money on easy. Even if I get rid of all of my army except for a few units per city, I still just barely break even or make a loss. What is a good strategy for making lots of money?

I haven't played the sequel, but I remember that in the original medival total war mines helping a good bit with income, and farms even more. Also, make sure you make generals with high acumen the governors of your properties. The other thing I'd do was raise taxes as high as I could go without risking rebellion. I'm not sure how much of this would translate to the sequel, but I hope some of it helps.
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Nicholas1024Mar 3 '11 at 2:00

6 Answers
6

First of all, you have to make sure that you keep all of your citizens happy so that you can tax them to death. Generals, town halls, churches, and farms are good ways to do this.

After that, build ports, markets, farms, and mines in all of your cities, and consider converting some castles that are well protected into cities, since castles are best at making soldiers, not florins.

Since ports are your main money makers, trade agreements come in handy, as does having lots of cities. Make sure not to let your docks get blockaded either.

If you need lots of money quickly though, there are a couple ways of doing it. You can try to sell off some reserve military, but that's not the best option, since you never know when you'll get attacked someplace that you never thought that you would, and since you don't get a lot for troops.

My favorite way is to just go on a crusade/jihad with my main army that's closest to the people of a different religion. All the troops in that army get free upkeep, and I can hire dirt-cheap mercenaries while conquering new cities and keeping the pope happy.

Another way that works well when used with crusades is to just loot random cities. Conquer a relatively undefended city that you know that you'll never be able to keep, loot it, sell all the buildings, and march all of your troops out and on to their next target. You'll usually get 30,000 florins, and your enemy's city gets reduced to almost nothing.

I have seen most of the people talk about raising taxes. That simply isn't the best idea.
On average, the biggest source of income for a single city are taxes. While raising taxes does immediately increase income, it also slows your population growth. Raising taxes should be your last option. I always keep my taxes on low and build all the population boosting buildings I can, because the larger your taxable population, the larger your income.

Don't conquer every single region and maintain trade rights. There a couple regions that can make a killing on trade; Constantinople, Stockholm, and Alexandria are a few examples. Each one of these land trades with every neighboring region and exports sea trade with 1-4 regions based on your number of trade fleets. But usually only 1 or 2 regions offers large trade incomes; for Stockholm it's trade with Sofia with that makes good income. But the income is far better when you trade with regions belonging to different factions.

Know the difference between governors and generals. Certain family members are more suited for leading a city. You can actually make generals better at governing by building certain buildings. Build lots of mines and markets with a general in town and it raises the chance of gaining attributes like "Good with Trade" or "Geologist." If you are in dire need you can cheat and add the attributes and ancillarys yourself.
Here are some of the best attributes:

brilliant_inventor

architect (reduces squalor)

overseer

intrepid_explorer

GoodAdministrator 3

GoodMiner 3

GoodTrader 3

Energetic 3

A fully upgraded governor can increase a city's income by 1000+

With all these tips I have gotten Stockholm to make 10,000 florins per turn, as a huge city of course.

Make sure to spend enough money on infrastructure/trade improvements in your regions - stuff like roads, farms, mines and so on. Another alternative is to sack the cities you conquer - this gains you a lump sum of cash at the expense of some reduction in population and some possible damage to the city.

It is possible to use a cheat to add money, press ` to bring up the console window and then type in the following;

add_money 40000

40,000 is the most money you can add in a single cheat, but you can use the up arrow to reselect your previously entered command in the console window, allowing you to run this cheat multiple times quickly, without typing it out repeatedly.

Take as many cities as possible and invest in ports, banks, and production buildings like mines and farms. Also have a ridiculously strong army so you can conquer and conquer some more and when you do raid the city or castle.